If
there was one thing that
used to be crystal clear
to any environmentalist,
it was that nuclear
energy was the deadliest
threat this planet
faced. That's why Dick
Gregory pledged at a
huge anti-nuke
demonstration in 1979
that he would eat no
solid food until all
nuclear plants in the
U.S. were shut down.

Mr.
Gregory may be getting
hungry.

But
it's time for the rest
of us to drop that
hostility to nuclear
power. It's increasingly
clear that the biggest
environmental threat we
face is actually global
warming, and that leads
to a corollary: nuclear
energy is green.

Nuclear
power, in contrast with
other sources, produces
no greenhouse gases. So
President Bush's overall
environmental policy
gives me the shivers,
but he's right to push
ahead for nuclear
energy. There haven't
been any successful
orders for new nuclear
plants since 1973, but
several proposals for
new plants are now
moving ahead - and
that's good for the
world we live in.

Global
energy demand will rise
60 percent over the next
25 years, according to
the International Energy
Agency, and nuclear
power is the cleanest
and best bet to fill
that gap.

Solar
power is a
disappointment, still
accounting for only
about one-fifth of 1
percent of the nation's
electricity and costing
about five times as much
as other sources. Wind
is promising, for its
costs have fallen 80
percent, but it suffers
from one big problem:
wind doesn't blow all
the time. It's difficult
to rely upon a source
that comes and goes.

In
contrast, nuclear energy
already makes up 20
percent of America's
power, not to mention 75
percent of France's.

A
sensible energy plan
must encourage
conservation - far more
than Mr. Bush's plans do
- and promote things
like hybrid vehicles and
hydrogen fuel cells. But
for now, nuclear power
is the only source that
doesn't contribute to
global warming and that
can quickly become a
mainstay of the grid.

Is it
safe? No, not entirely.
Three Mile Island and
Chernobyl demonstrated
that, and there are also
risks from terrorist
attacks.

Then
again, the world now has
a half-century of
experience with nuclear
power plants, 440 of
them around the world,
and they have proved
safer so far than the
alternatives. America's
biggest power source is
now coal, which kills
about 25,000 people a
year through soot in the
air.

To put
it another way, nuclear
energy seems much safer
than our dependency on
coal, which kills more
than 60 people every
day.

Moreover,
nuclear technology has
become far safer over
the years. The future
may belong to pebble-bed
reactors, a new design
that promises to be both
highly efficient and
incapable of a meltdown.

Radioactive
wastes are a challenge.
But burdening future
generations with nuclear
wastes in deep shafts is
probably more reasonable
than burdening them with
a warmer world in which
Manhattan is submerged
under 20 feet of water.

Right
now, the only
significant source of
electricity in the U.S.
that does not involve
carbon emissions is
hydropower. But salmon
runs have declined so
much that we should be
ripping out dams, not
adding more.

What
killed nuclear power in
the past was cold
economics. Major studies
at M.I.T. and elsewhere
show that nuclear power
is still a bit more
expensive than new coal
or natural gas plants,
but in the same ballpark
if fossil fuel prices
rise. And if a
$200-per-ton tax was
imposed on carbon
emissions, nuclear
energy would become
cheaper than coal from
new plants.

So
it's time to welcome
nuclear energy as green
(though not to subsidize
it with direct handouts,
as the nuclear industry
would like). Indeed,
some environmentalists
are already climbing
onboard. For example,
the National Commission
on Energy Policy, a
privately financed
effort involving
environmentalists,
academics and industry
representatives, issued
a report in December
that favors new nuclear
plants.

One of
the most eloquent
advocates of nuclear
energy is James
Lovelock, the British
scientist who created
the Gaia hypothesis,
which holds that Earth
is, in effect, a
self-regulating
organism.

"I
am a Green, and I
entreat my friends in
the movement to drop
their wrongheaded
objection to nuclear
energy," Mr.
Lovelock wrote last
year, adding:
"Every year that we
continue burning carbon
makes it worse for our
descendents. ... Only
one immediately
available source does
not cause global
warming, and that is
nuclear energy."